good afternoon, everyone. welcome to the lead. i m jake tapper. white house press secretary sean spicer just wrapped up his press briefing where he spoke more in-depth about president trump s decision to withdraw federal protection for transgender students. cnn s sara murray is at the white house for us. sara, spicer was pressed on whether this decision was in any way a civil rights issue. reporter: that s right, jake. it s a question that the white house press secretary repeatedly dodged. he was asked if this issue allowing transgender students to choose whichever bathroom they feel most comfortable in is a civil rights issue. he repeatedly refused to answer that question saying it s a states rights issue. he was also asked what the president s personal belief is on this. remember the president said caitlyn jenner would be free to use whichever bathroom in trump tower. spicer said the president has been clear on that but he did not elaborate on what that means. and, sa
narrowly congressman keith ellison for the top spot. but they perez appointed ellison as his deputy. sparking words of praise from former president obama and words of caution from senator bernie sanders. we re going to have more on that in a moment. but first we re learning more about communication between the white house and officials in charge of investigating president trump s ties to russia. cnn wars the first to reveal that the fbi and the white house reports contact between trump campaign staffers and senior russian officials and the chairman of the house intelligence committee said he had contact with the white house on this story and he engaged with reporters on it. i want to turn now to white house correspondent athena jones. i want to go through the details with you on this. before we go to that, we actually have some breaking news from president trump. this is what he just tweeted. he said i will not be attending the white house correspondents association din they
campaign between donald trump s associates and russians known to u.s. intelligence. pamela brown and evan perez broke this story along with jim sciutto, manu raju. pamela and evan are out front. let me start with you, pamela. what are you learning tonight? cnn is told the fbi refused a request to knock down media reports about communications during the 2016 presidential campaign, between donald trump s associates and russians known to u.s. intelligence. multiple u.s. officials telling cnn the white house sought the help of the bureaus and other agencies investigating the matter, to say the reports were wrong and there had been no contacts whatsoever. you ll recall cnn and the new york times first reported that just over a week ago, the reports about these contacts that were made during the campaign. erin, so far the white house has not commented. this was a very significant report. evan, this is not a typical request. it s pretty stunning when you hear it on the face of